Well, there’s washing powder next to his nutella bread…
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And for all the session-centric folks, the corresponding key session of the day.
Threshold uphill run; started at lower end of threshold (2.2 mmol for him) and moved up to top end of threshold. Perhaps slightly above. Altitude!
3x10’/2’
4x5’/1’
5x3’/1’
5x1/‘1’
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Ryan Hall (former marathoner, US records in the half and full) was on the Peter Attia podcast. There was lots of training talk and lots of talk about the mistakes he made along the way (weight loss, fasting, poor diet, etc).
He was raised at altitude since age 5. By high school, he was going down to sea level to do intervals because he and his dad intuitively figured out that that worked really well.
You listen to a guy like this and you really do come to the conclusion that elites are born that way. He could still run a 5 minute mile on almost zero running after having retired. And this was after becoming a weight lifter and bulking up.
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Some of Attia’s podcasts are good, others not so much. I usually give them about 15 minutes before deciding on each one.
This one with Hall was excellent
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Might be interesting when looking at the training MvDP has been doing recently? If not, please ignore 
EDIT: Actually quite a few tweets from Stephen Seiler on analysis of MvDP (and also Matej Mohoric) dated 20/03 from MSR and other races.
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Revisiting Czech MTB pro Ondřej Cink. He is always interesting for his session descriptions. With him we often know what he’s actually doing.
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Lantern Rouge on MvdP’s Comeback Training:
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Was just about to post this, quite a good session breakdown by one of Lantern Rouges new employees. Some interesting charts that add to the graphs we’ve seen above by Sryke but also has some good text analysis for those who prefer reading rather than studying the graphs themselves.
Most notable charts:
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Using the Zone settings posted up thread for MvdP for these 37 days of training from the LR site, I get the following (back of the napkin numbers);
Over 37 days, 28 rides, 17 rides with “structure”.
Total of 126.1 hours, which is about 25 hours per week.
5 hours and 12 minutes doing “structure”.
“Structure” are those notes/desriptions from the pictures posted above from the LR analysis.
More back of the napkin math;
Within those 312 minutes of “structure” we have 133 minutes at Tempo with about 68 minutes of those Tempo around Sweet Spot (84%-93%), 78 Minutes of Threshold and of those perhaps 14 Minutes would be Sweet Spot, and I didn’t try to breakdown the individual Over/Under workouts but we have 84 minutes those with the O/U being a mix of Z4/VO2/and just a bit of Anaerobic in those Overs.
I didn’t drill down too deeply, I was just looking to get an idea of what this “stuff” was.
Again…Volume, volume, volume and get more volume and then some more volume and while we’re at at it has anyone had an VOLUME (well get some). The rest as the saying in this thread goes is stuff. The vast majority of that stuff is done during longer rides. There’s really no go out and do warmup for 15 minutes and do 2X20 in this Zone and Rest Interval for 5 Minutes, then cool down for 10 minutes workouts.
Go ride…a lot…do some shit.
YMMV…and mine too.
NOTE: Calculations are dirty and shouldn’t be taken as an application or work product for me to do accounting for a big 4 firm.
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so, that is basically 5 weeks and a question on the “stuff”
- 25 hours/week and 1.25 hours/week of “stuff” (5% per week)
or - 25 hours/week and 5.25 hours/week of “stuff” (20% per week)
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Yes, and of those 5hours and 12minutes 43% of that is Tempo and 25% is Threshold (but still working out between those two how much is Sweet Spot), and then we have 27% of Over Unders with over portion of the O/U being Threshold and VO2 and a smattering of Anaerobic/Sprint.
I think I’m going to forget about sweet spot as a zone and just move to thinking about my work as either Tempo or Threshold. Knowing that high tempo and low threshold is referred to as sweet spot but but just look at the 5 zones…or really just four zones 2,3,4,5 becuase Z1 takes care of itself and above Z5 is just sprinting or “giving it the beans”. Since I’m not a sprinter or really any kind of racer type I really need to pair things down since I tend to overthink all this training stuff. I’m getting too bogged down.
I think it will be much less complicated for me.
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Agree about the zones. And start from the top, 25 hours per week and 20% is “stuff” right?
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It’s about 4% total. 7,500 minutes and of that 312 was the stuff with structure, some weeks more than that as he got later in the block.
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Think I end up with more TiZ in those high-intensity zones from “just riding”. It might have to do with having less than half the FTP of MvdP - a couple of pedalstrokes accelerating away from the lights, or over the top of a small bump, already puts me briefly into z6. He’d do the same power, but its still z2 for him. When you have a much lower ftp, your zones are just more compressed, and you move through them more quickly. And some basic resistance factors don’t change, ie, it takes roughly the same force to accelerate his bike as mine. I could do it much slower, but thats not that practical, as you have limited time at the lights, etc. There is just a minimum power you need to use in these situations, but for him, its all endurance, and for us mortals, its more.
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It’s quite amazing to think of someone like him doing 300 watts for hours and hours all while being at 70% of FTP.
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Very interesting read, thanks.
Conventional wisdom: you need to build a broad base to really benefit from intensity.
MvdP in Alicante: hold my beer.
The rate of absorption of stimulus and improvement is just stunning. Off the couch to San Remo podium in six weeks. Will be interesting to see if his deep fitness will be enough in classics finales tougher than San Remo. Probably yes, it being him and all.
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He’s got an insane life long endurance base. It doesn’t go away in 6 weeks.
The 6 week break may actually make him better, in the long run… if that’s possible. He’ll have cleared deep fatigue from a relentless life long schedule.
Watch the stage of the Italian race MVDP just won yesterday. Incredible. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. He rode the break all day, went solo from the break, got caught by the bunch AND smashed everyone in the bunch sprint.
Nuts.
He’s officially reached boss level.
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Of course, but my point was that at the beginning he just is not metabolically very fit.
I have this theory that Wout van Aert added another level to his fitness, due to the crash and i jury in the TDF ITT. It forced him to rebuild, probably with a lot of gym training too. Then covid came, and he was already set up and used to training without racing. Then when racing started again, he was in a different class to anyone else. This break for MvdP might have done something similar.
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